Top 10 milestones of Portland’s Pride celebration

This weekend, the 45th annual Portland Pride celebration, presented by the nonprofit Pride Northwest, will include a two-day Waterfront Festival, and a Sunday parade that will wind its way from Old Town to Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

The parade and festival draw thousands of spectators and marchers, celebrating that progress that the LGBTQ community has made in recent years. But the event also offers a chance to reflect on how much things have changed since the Stonewall riots in New York City 50 years ago this June kickstarted the modern gay rights movement.

Here’s a look back at 10 pivotal moments in Portland Pride history.

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1975: The very first Pride fair

Portland’s very first Pride celebration didn’t feature a parade at all. In 1975, a group of about 200 people gathered in the South Park Blocks near Portland State University for Gay Pride Fair, a five-hour event that featured arts and crafts, food and dancing.

The following year, the fair moved to Waterfront Park, and featured 15 booths. Those initial fairs were sponsored by the Portland Town Council, a forerunner of the Right to Privacy PAC.

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1977: “Gay Pride Day”

In 1977, Portland got its first Pride Parade, and controversy erupted when Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt proclaimed a “Gay Pride Day,” prompting a number of churches to publish an open letter in The Oregonian offering to help gays and lesbians repent. The proclamation also launched a move to have Goldschmidt recalled, claiming he had “defamed Portland” by turning it into “a haven for homosexuals.”

The first parade drew between 300 and 400 marchers, carrying signs that read “We are your children,” and “Defend the rights of gays – defend the rights of all.” The parade was followed by a brief rally in Terry Schrunk Plaza across from City Hall. Meanwhile, about 200 opponents of gay rights gathered in Laurelhurst Park to protest the “Gay Pride Day” proclamation.

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Greg Lawler, The Oregonian

1982: Unity Through Diversity

By the early 1980s, Portland’s Pride celebration had become an annual tradition, and this year it was renamed Lesbian and Gay Pride Week to be more inclusive and to deemphasize the role of gay bars in the event’s organization.

Marching to a theme of “Unity Through Diversity,” more than 2,000 men and women took to the streets of downtown Portland, followed by a gathering at Waterfront Park. According to The Oregonian, the messages on the signs carried in that march echoed the theme: “Put the right wing back in the closet”; “End gay bashing”; and “Stop the raids on undocumented workers.”

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Marv Bondarowicz, The Oregonian

1983: The new shadow of AIDS

About 2,000 people marched through downtown Portland to kick off this year’s Lesbian and Gay Pride Week, to a theme of “Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are,” a riff on a song from “The Wizard of Oz.” But the specter of AIDS cast a shadow over the celebration.

The first cases of the disease had been diagnosed only two years earlier, and there was a lot of misinformation about how it was contracted. “Make war on AIDS not El Salvador,” one sign proclaimed.

The parade also caused controversy when a marcher in black-face impersonated “Aunt Jemima,” which led organizers to adopt of conduct code. If marchers stepped over the line of good taste, they could be asked to leave the parade. But exactly how do you define “good taste” for a parade that features drag queens, shirtless men and people wearing acres of leather?

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Marc Kawanishi, The Oregonian

1989: Remembering Stonewall

To mark the 20th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, which launched the gay rights movement, nearly 670,000 people turned out for pride parades across the country, including massive gatherings in San Francisco and New York.

In Portland, the theme of the parade was "Stonewall 20 -- A Generation of Pride," and featured the Portland Gay Men's Chorus among the marchers.

The 1989 march also came at a time of political urgency, coming after the passage the previous fall of Measure 8, a ballot initiative that repealed then-Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s executive order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in state government, and prohibited job protection for gay and lesbian state workers. The political group Oregon Citizens Alliance, which backed the measure, would go on to promote other discriminatory ballot measures in the 1990s, but Measure 8 was its only statewide win.

Oregonian file photo

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Bob Ellis, The Oregonian

1991: A father’s love

While Portland's Lesbian and Gay Pride parade had featured local and state politicians over the years, 1991 brought something new. Police Chief Tom Potter rode in the parade to show solidarity with his daughter Katie, a Portland police officer who had recently come out. Potter also wanted to show that the gay community that they could count on fair treatment from police, after a long history of being targeted.

Appearing in the parade wasn’t Potter’s first outreach to the gay community, however. When he was deputy chief in the mid-‘80s, he was the police bureau’s liaison to the gay community.

“The role of police is to see people are treated equally and fairly and that their rights are provided them,” he told The Oregonian.

The Oregon Citizens Alliance called on Potter to resign, claiming that by wearing his uniform in the parade he had made his own political agenda that of the Portland Police Bureau. Potter could continue to appear in the annual parade, including during the four years when he served as Portland’s mayor in the 2000s.

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Melvin G. Jackson, The Oregonian

1997: Becoming more inclusive

After years of being known and the Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade, the name changed in 1997 to The Lesbian, Gay, Bi and Trans Pride Parade, a nod to the expanded range of community represented by the march.

North Portland’s Deborah Samuels told The Oregonian she appreciated the name change: “As a bisexual woman, I'm really happy for the feeling of being included. We get judged sometimes just as harshly by people for being bisexual as a gay or lesbian person might. We take the heat … So it's nice this year for it to be explicit.”

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Joel Davis, The Oregonian/OregonLive

2004: Marriage in Multnomah County

For a brief while in 2004, same-sex marriage was legal in Multnomah County, after

County Commissioners Serena Cruz (left), Lisa Naito, and Maria Rojo de Steffey (along with with chairwoman Diane Linn) changed county policy earlier in the year, allowing gays and lesbians to marry. More than 3,000 couples got marriage licenses, though they were revoked after The Defense of Marriage Coalition’s Measure 36 passed that fall, which amended the Oregon Constitution to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.

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Xiaojie Ouyang, The Oregonian/OregonLive

2014: Celebrating same-sex marriage

There was plenty to celebrate at 2014’s Pride parade. Just a month before, same-sex marriage became legal in Oregon when a federal judge ruled that the constitutional amendment that voters passed in 2004 banning gay marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The next year, the United States Supreme Court would follow suit, guaranteeing the right to same-sex marriage in every state.

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Stephanie Yao Long, The Oregonian/OregonLive

2016: Remembering Orlando with tears, determination

The 2016 Portland Pride Parade came just one week after a gunman entered the gay Pulse nightclub in Orlando and opened fire, killing 49 people and injuring 53 more before he was fatally shot by police. It was an act of violence that served as a stark reminder that while significant gains have been made towards equality for gays and lesbians, intolerance remains.

Because of those worries, Portland Police increased security for the parade. But the crowds of supporters lining the parade route were among the biggest in history. It was also the longest parade to date, with 150 entries featuring about 8,000 marchers.

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Xiaojie Ouyang, The Oregonian/OregonLive

The 2019 Portland Pride Parade kicks off at 11 a.m. on Sunday, June 16, at the corner of West Burnside and Northwest Park Avenue, and winds through Old Town before disbanding at Tom McCall Waterfront Park.